Against the Wires
by littlebites
Summary: Dean sells the Impala.  Set post 7.02.


Dean limps up to the Impala and snaps a picture with his phone. Less than an hour later he shells out $50 to run the picture in an ad.

_For Sale by Owner_.

Dean remembers thinking his first cast was Awesome (yeah, with a capitol 'A').

God, he was a stupid kid. The cast comes up his thigh like a ten pound hooker's boot, and he's not just down a leg but both hands because all the one crutch experiment got him was bruises up his arm and a dirty look from Bobby. The two-bedroom rental in the middle of Hatfield, MN wasn't Dean's ideal hiding spot (not even 10 miles off the freeway) but when Sam started to jerk like there was a different poltergeist in every limb not even an hour into the escape, their already narrow options slimmed down to getting Sam strapped to a bed in a stationary somewhere, under the eyes of a medical professional whose face wasn't about to split at the midline and sprout lizard fangs. Since barely fifty miles from Leviathon central is not nearly far enough, and there's no reason for moving Sam in his condition that a hospital isn't going check out (and tear apart the moment they do), they need someone who takes cash. And they need cash.

Dean looks at his brother, quiet, now, and still, and for one frantic, bottomless moment wants to stop loving him. Wants to uncurl his hands from the death-grip he's had on the kid for the better part of the last 29 years, wants to stretch his fingers and crack his knuckles. Thinks about cool air against his palms and the lightness of an open hand.

Then he thinks about a field in Kansas with the Impala hot at his back as his blood and his scripture dripped from his mouth and smeared across the devil's hands. Of the perfect silouhette of his brother's raised fist haloed in sunset. Of afterwards, with the familiar creeping numbness in his right leg as he pressed the Impala toward a promise. How hollow she was, with only one seat filled.

Dean calls Dr. Robert.

_If you love something, set it free_, the counselor says.

_Bullshit_, Dean thinks. He's not a guy who loves a lot, or easy, but he loves _hard_ and believes, when he believes in anything, in holding on tight. He would probably attribute it to the things he has bothered to love being scarce and slippery, if he were the sort of self-aware guy who thought about such things. He's not, he just keeps his grip and gives chase if anything should happen to slip through his fingers.

He counts the bills carefully. Twice.

He curls his fingers tighter than necessary as he draws the keys from his pocket. The ridiculous "cutie pie" keyring Sam had slipped on there years ago ("_Pie_," was all Sam had said, smiling with too many teeth and not enough dimples) pressing into his palm, dull and accusing. For the second time that day he appraises the man in front of him, only this time he's not thinking _mud on his shoes_ or _soft hands_ or _fat ass is going to _ruin _the fucking seats_. This time a thousand possibilities of fight or flight stream behind his eyes. He could draw his gun, or his fists, or just race to his baby's side.

Sam could walk up, his eyes exasperated, his sullen mouth leaking questions, and Dean wouldn't have to do this at all.

He tosses the keys and turns away in a single motion. He wants to say, _take care of her_, wants to tell how the engine holds more blood than oil, but he's pretending he's okay with this, pretending he wouldn't have rather have sold a kidney, or his god damn ass. He's pretending, and the mask is stone, and without voice.

Dean doesn't dream images anymore, he lives like a blind man, tunneling his world down to sound and touch, and putting up walls to memories of a sodden trench coat and his brother's wide, skittering eyes. He sleeps fitfully, his baby's distant rumble echoing between his ear. He wakes to the steadying sound of his brother's heart beating against the wires. He presses a hand to Sam's giant chest (gotta be to hold the kid's fucking heart) to feel the swell, and leans close to let his brother's breath press back.

The money is enough for another month. The nurse practitioner Dr. Robert set them up with says if the seizures are going to stop at all they will by then, and Bobby says he'll have the new insurance ready, that kind that covers long-term care. Sam's body hasn't erupted into one of those helpless, horror-show dances in over a week, but Dean's not really all that relieved because now his brother is as still as summer air. Dean asks how long until Sam wakes up, and the nurse hedges like a guilty man's lawyer. Probably Dean could force an answer if he really wanted, but he doesn't want to hear it, not really. Won't even think it, what he's known since the salvage yard.

He's leaving for a job today. In his mind he was going to sit by Sammy's side until his brother woke (any fucking minute now), but Bobby calls him out and raises the point that they're way too close to Leviathon HQ and not nearly far enough along figuring out how to deal with that. They'd gotten Sam out of the hospital, but they couldn't take him farther, not yet, so in the meantime they both needed to lay trail, anywhere but here. While he's at it, might as well save some people, hunt some things, what the fuck ever. Two birds, one bullet, and all that shit.

Plus, he's always hated witches (just not nearly as much as he hates leaving Sammy with a stranger).

Witches are always tough (unless it's punk-ass kids messing around magic, which Dean doesn't really count as witches, because it's fucking punk-ass kids) what with the centuries of experience evading hunters and their freaky mystic arsenals. Doubly tough going it alone after years of having a partner. Dean gets careless, gets drunk, but he also gets lucky.

After the witch there's a shifter. His first banshee. A mated pair of wendigos (who fucking knew?). Dean still drinks, but as his luck runs thin he takes more care. Calls him brother's phone every night, and when the line picks up no one speaks. He falls asleep to the steadying sound of his brother's heart beating against the wires.

Dean changes cars every couple of towns, or even takes the bus sometimes. He always loved to drive, loved the strange-familiar road, and the Impala's seat, and his worn tapes, and going somewhere, or nowhere. Lately, though, sometimes he picks up his latest set of car keys and knows, just knows, he's heading for _crumpled against a guard rail_, or _smeared across a semi_. It doesn't bother him, he doesn't feel it, but he thinks about how he hasn't heard from Bobby in awhile and buys a bus ticket and waits for a phone call that says Sam's awake.

A werewolf. Two close calls with the Leviathons. A black dog.

Dean thinks he'd make one hell of a hit man. Wonders how much that pays.

Dean hustles in every town he hits, every chance he gets. Goes into it with a fervor that makes his hunting looked bleached and shabby. Turning the cash into a money order and getting it in the mail is the only stop he makes on his nightly journey into the darkness where his baby hums around him and the soft hush of Sam's breath is only temporary, only sleep.

He still orders pie every chance he gets, tries every flavor from coast to coast. They all taste like gunmetal and whiskey.

The Leviathons corner him in a (supposedly) haunted house in rural Ohio, almost Kentucky, almost Indiana. He fires every bullet he's got, but doesn't draw his knife. They leave him messy; no parts missing, but few in their right place.

The pain is glimmering at the edges, but Dean stands at the center of the dark tunnel he follows to sleep every night, and it doesn't quite reach. He hears the rumble of the Impala, coming closer this time. _Finally_, he thinks, _gonna take me to heaven, baby?_

The engine cuts out and a beat of steps moves towards him through the house. It's not a tempo he's heard in awhile, but it's the one he's set his life to, and he doesn't need to leave the tunnel to see who those steps have carried to his side. He wants to ask, _how did you get here?_, but nothing works.

Dimples bloom on Sam's face. _Haven't seen those in years,_ Dean thinks, as his brother takes one of Dean's curled fists and forces his stiff fingers around the familiar key ring.

"I stole a car," Sam says.


End file.
